68 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



Therefore, without in any way prejudging the question as 

 to whether or not there is any radical distinction between a 

 mind thus far gifted and the conceptual thought of man, I 

 may take it for granted that the ideation of infants is from 

 the first generic ; and hence that those psychologists are 

 greatly mistaken who thoughtlessly assume that the forma- 

 tion of class-ideas is a prerogative of more advanced intelli- 

 gence. No doubt their view of the matter seems plausible 

 at first sight, because within the region of conceptual thought 

 we know that progress is marked by increasing powers of 

 generalization — that it is the easiest steps which have to do 

 with the cognition of particulars ; the more difficult which 

 have to do with abstractions. But this is to confuse recepts 

 with concepts, and so to overlook a distinction between the 

 two orders of generalization which it is of the first importance 

 to be clear about. A generic idea is generic because the 

 particular ideas of which it is composed present such obvious 

 points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together 

 in consciousness ; but a general idea is general for precisely 

 the opposite reason — namely, because the points of resemblance 

 which it has seized are obscured from immediate perception, 

 and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness 

 but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of 

 a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In 

 other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are 

 concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classifica- 

 tion with which all processes of so-called " intuitive inference " 

 depend — such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the 

 kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is 

 that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping 

 of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both 

 cases ; but the one order is due to the closeness of 

 resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other 

 order it is an expression of their remoteness from merely 

 perceptual associations. 



Or, to put the matter in yet another light, if we think it 

 sounds less paradoxical to speak of the process of classifica- 



